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Comment by astura | Hacker News Reader

This is a really, really ignorant comment. I learned to code in the classroom with no other motivation besides paid employment and wasn't "bored silly." I've made a very successful career for myself in the many years since.

Programmers are not different from other professions no matter how special you may feel.

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> Programmers are not different from other professions no matter how special you may feel.

I find it odd how offended you seem by my post.

I don't think that programmers are any different from other professions in this sense. But the subject of this thread is about programming which is why I commented about that. It is just like other STEM subjects in that - a lot of people study them at university, but only a few people actually go on to work in the field they studied. Some studies find that only around 25% of STEM graduates actually go on to work in the field they studied.

http://shortsleeveandtieclub.com/what-percentage-of-engineer...

There is absolutely a better way you could have phrased this. In fact, the easiest is to entirely remove your first sentence. You could make a counter-point, stating that not everyone is driven by external motivation, providing yourself as an anecdotal example.

Instead you provided an insult and then gave anecdotal evidence.

Hence why I said "Chances are" - meaning "there is a high probably that".

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